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Sophie Stephenson is an amazing, beautiful and resilient 3 year old girl who has a rare form of childhood cancer, Stage 4 Neuroblastoma, that has attacked her central nervous system. After completing 18 months of gruelling treatment, the cancer returned in late-2020 with Sophie’s best chance of survival now lying through treatment only offered overseas. The Stephenson family will relocate to Barcelona at the end of February to give Sophie every chance of overcoming this enormous battle. One of our Elected Members knew that her family was looking for a venue to host a fundraising event to raise money towards the $300,000 that the treatment and associated activities is going to cost.

Council’s Community Connections Team organised for the amazing fundraising event to be held at the Glenunga Hub.

Key players from the Adelaide United Soccer Team donated their time to help make the day a massive success. Sophie almost couldn’t make it due to the side effects from a recent chemo treatment. Thankfully she felt strong enough to be part of the day!

More than $5,000 was raised and Sophie and family fly out on 28 February to Barcelona for treatment.

Images from the day can be found here https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1y4Kma0ut8OXNtmd8g7I9vtYMdJQfr5JE

Opened August 1981, the Constable Hyde Memorial Garden is dedicated to the memory of Constable William Hyde who lost his life while on duty in Marryatville in January 1909.

Hyde was called to the Marryatville Hotel on Saturday 2 January 1909 at 9.30 pm because of a disturbance between three men and the hotel patrons. The three men were suspected of being about to rob the local tramway office. When Constable Hyde arrived the three men, who had entered the tramways office, ran off with the Constable in pursuit. In the affray Constable Hyde grappled with one of the men, holding him to the ground, and the two others ran off. They then turned back to assist their companion. Five revolver shots were fired, the last of these hitting Hyde in the cheek. Extra police and a tracker were unable to capture the men.

34 year old Const Hyde died in the Royal Adelaide Hospital on January 4, 1909, two days after the suspects he had chased on foot shot him.

Hyde was well-liked and a capable officer and around 12,000 people attended his funeral.

At the time, a Stg250 pound reward was posted for information leading to the conviction of the killers, but no one was ever arrested.

The Burnside Historical Society have an excellent written account of this incident in one of their newsletters https://bit.ly/2Z4tvph

A memorial is located in the park in memory of the Constable. The artwork consists of a bronze policeman’s jacket, helmet and newspaper on a sandstone bench. The jacket and helmet are modelled on the exact items worn by police in 1909, with Constable Hyde’s police number featured on the helmet. The sculpture is incredibly detailed, capturing features of the jacket’s buttons, stitching, and a police whistle; the newspaper contains words from the newspaper of the day concerning the incident.

“The Old Gum Tree” on Glynburn Road, Kensington Gardens is approximately 300 years old. The state heritage-listed River Red Gum is 29 metres tall and has a 10.4-metre girth.

Pre European settlement, trees such as the River Red Gum, South Australian Blue Gum, Peppermint Gum and Golden Wattle once wooded the slopes of Burnside generously.

Photograph: Glynburn Road, c. 1905.

The Burnside Library is turning 60 this year!

On 8 April 1961, the library opened with a book stock of 7,800 and one full-time staff member. In January 2000, the old library building was demolished. The current building opened in October of the same year.

Pictured here is the former Burnside Library. Do you have any memories of the ‘old’ library?

Young Citizen of the Year John White

John White, 29, has been named as City of Burnside’s Young Citizen of the Year for 2021 at this morning’s Australia Day Ceremony at Hazelwood Park. John has been a band conductor since 2014 for several community bands. He was awarded the South Australian Band Association Band Person of the Year in 2018. John often mentors youth and provides learning support for children with disabilities and general students. Since a young age he has performed in community bands and will often volunteer to fill in on instruments. John wasn’t expecting such an accolade but says it is good to draw attention to the Band.

Jenny Cooper has been named 2021 Citizen of the Year at an Australia Day Ceremony at Hazelwood Park this morning. Jenny, 58, was recognised for her efforts in starting up the Australian branch of Breadtags for Wheelchairs, a not-for-profit organisation which collects bread tags and recycles them to raise funds. Jenny, of Rosslyn Park, set up a national collection network and engaged a local recycler, Transmutation in Robe, to produce bread boards, bowls and platters. By September 2020 Aussie Breadtags for Wheelchairs had recycled over 2 tonnes of breadtags, (approximately 5.4 million) and in that time has funded 14 wheelchairs. It was quite humbling to receive the Award," Jenny says.

After nearly 30 years, John Moore has handed in his resignation as a dedicated volunteer at St. Saviour's cemetery, Glen Osmond. His many years of volunteering have earnt him the award of 2021 City of Burnside Citizen of the Year.

John, 94, took on this voluntary work when he retired from teaching at Pulteney Grammar School.

An active member of St Saviour's Glen Osmond parish, John learnt that the volunteer who tended the cemetery had retired and he took on the task. “I was my own boss, week by week,” he says.

He attended regularly on Mondays, even on public holidays, to do little projects, always ready with his tool box. These projects included re-aligning monuments and edging, removing old tree stumps (“I dug them up by hand”), trimming hedges, making sure that gates shut properly, fences were secure, maintaining paths, spreading gravel, unearthing an old headstone and keeping other headstones upright or safe.

“It is important to respect the dead,” he says. “Some of the gravesites are so old that they don’t have headstones so we don’t know the history.”

But what history he did know he regularly shared while conducting history walks during History Month in May for a number of years, as well as showing classes from local schools and the Burnside Historical Society members. Each year he organised the skip for the annual cemetery working bee and kept attendance records. He also looked after the application for Council green bins and made sure they were put out each fortnight — always as full as possible!

John made many improvements, discussed management plans, dealt with vandalism, floods and drainage problems, trees and large branches falling, always with a positive attitude. John's achievements have been recognised by the parish and members of the public, who access the cemetery for walks, quiet contemplation, learning about social history of the area and visiting family members.

With his 95th birthday coming up in March he thought it was time to fully retire. “I still go to see Liz, who took over from me.”

His reaction to being selected as Senior Citizen of the Year was “I am staggered. Volunteer of the Year yes but Citizen of the Year!”

Asked his plans for his own burial he says “I have decided, when my time comes, to be cremated and my ashes to be in a memorial at the cemetery.”

History:

The cemetery, belonging to St. Saviour's Church, lies to the north-east of the Church, further along Pridmore Road. As with the church it is situated on land gifted by Osmond Gilles in 1854.

On the south side of the cemetery stands the tombstone of Glen Osmond's first resident, Edwin Olliver. Nearby are the headstones of other pioneers, including those of Redman Goldsack and his wives, Elizabeth and Christiana.

In a central position, under the shelter of a cypress tree, is the oldest headstone, recording the resting place of Moritz F. Weidenbach (interred 1858). Many of the oldest graves are without headstones, possibly due to the relatives having left the neighbourhood.

In 1909, brothers Malcolm and Wyn Tweedie built their home The Croft and established a 67 acre apricot orchard in Highfield (now St Georges). They planted a wide variety of apricots, most ripening at Christmas time.

Each year a tent village emerged in the paddock for University students seeking holiday work. The fruit business was unsuccessful, and the Tweedie brothers made more from selling their land in the 1920s than they ever did from their produce.

Glen Osmond became the birth-place of Australia’s mining history when two Cornish miners discovered silver-lead ore at Mt Osmond in 1841. Three mines were quickly established in the area: Wheal Gawler (1841), Glen Osmond Mines (1842) and Wheal Watkins (1843). Robert Watkins purchased the land for Wheal Watkins in 1842. Over its 10 years of intermittent operation between 1843 and 1916, Wheal Watkins yielded approximately 15,00 tons of ore.

Thanks to Mayor Monceaux and Meredith Ide from the Burnside Historical Society for providing us with a brief history of the mine. To discover more about the history of Burnside mines visit the Local History Corner at: http://bit.ly/MiningInBurnside Or go to: https://www.burnsidehistory.org.au/ to book a tour, or read more about history in Burnside.

The Lockwood Store was the centre of village life in Burnside. In 1859, Joseph Lockwood built the shop and a two-room house on the corner of High Street and Lockwood Road. From 1863, Lockwood operated a post office from the store and acted as an agent for the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages. The building was later extended, with a second storey added, providing residential accommodation.

In 1989, renovations connected the building to the neighbouring townhouse development.